She smiled and embraced him. “Well, thank you, N’kun,” said Yenni, returning his greeting with the term for an older brother.

He frowned at her. “Why aren’t you dressed?” Dayo ran a hand along his beard, as he always did when he was irritated. “Kebi, could you at least try to look like a daughter of the chiefclan? This feast is to celebrate your birth, after all.”

Yenni sighed. Dayo would make a fine chieftain once their parents stepped down, if for no other reason than his rigorous observance of propriety.

“I’m sorry, N’kun,” she said, “but I just returned from hunting, and I became so caught up in mixing runepaint—”

“Yes, the hunt,” her brother said, cutting her off. “I received a complaint from our cousins that you impeded their kill. Again.”

She had the grace to look sheepish, but said nothing.

“You are too old to still be hunting, Kebi,” he scolded. “Whoever heard of a woman of seven . . . no, eighteen rains still roaming the hills and plains?”

Yenni folded her arms. “I am not married.”

“No, and I suspect you intend to remain so. Forever, if you could, but you cannot.”

Yenni caught the flicker of concern in her brother’s eyes and knew he was referring to their shaky political position. At present, their tribe was the most powerful on the Sha Islands, but their father’s health was failing, and with each meeting he missed, the wolves within the other tribes sniffed closer. A political marriage would do much to help them regain their footing.

“You have a duty to strengthen the tribe, Yenni. The same for all of us who bear the name ka Yirba.”

“Then why aren’t you married?” she grumped.

He looked at her out of the side of his eye but didn’t answer, and she knew she was approaching disrespect. Yenni didn’t exactly envy her older brother’s position. He was in training to become a general, and besides that, he spent more and more time in political meetings with their mother, acting as a stand-in for their father and resolving their people’s disputes. But he was only five years older than her, and she knew the other leaders did not yet respect Dayo as they did her father. He would likely be forced into a strategic alliance himself soon.

“Apologies, N’kun,” she said, and bowed her head. “But I know I will find a way to cure N’baba abroad, the Sha will guide me. Once he is well and active again, perhaps I won’t need to—”

But Dayo was shaking his head. “You are all but engaged to Prince Natahi ka Gunzu. How would we explain to the Gunzu that you don’t want to marry their second son? They already believe we look down on them, Yenni. You know that would cause them grave insult.”